Re: Confused about a thread-safe singleton example.

static Mutex mutex;
static TheClass *instance;

static TheClass * getInstance () {
   MutexLocker lock(mutex);
   if (!instance)
     instance = new TheClass();
   return instance;
}

The example then goes on to talk about how double-check locking is
broken, etc. My question is pretty much this: Is C++ static
initialization thread-safe? If not, then how does the above example
safely use "mutex"? If so, then what is wrong with this:

static TheClass instance; // not a pointer

static TheClass * getInstance () {
  return &instance; // it's correctly initialized?
}